On January 1, 2018, I declared in my school group on Whatapp, “I resolve to run ” wanna run with me, come along, let’rs run.
Over the past two years, I have learned to harness the power of social media fo powerful running. I now have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter accounts apart from regular WhatApp to engage with people on running. So, here I am going to share with you my experience of how I am reaping rich dividends from social media and you too can go for it.
The group event to run on a new year day evoked a very positive response. Many of the group members showed up the next morning. They all posted their pics in the group. It was very encouraging to see my childhood buddies coming out of the houses and running outside, soaking the sunlight and bringing the smile on each other’s face. Seeing me posting and a few others, many others too followed suit. They were all thanking me and praising me.
Beyond the praise, I discovered that I became accountable for a task that I had announced to the group. When you are accountable, you will do your best. My friends were looking up to me. But, I also knew that this fervor will lose its steam as all new year resolutions do. So, I wanted to give them something big and engage them in a kind of game. I made my announcement of running 1800 km.
Daily morning, I would go for a run. On the way, I would click pics with my cellphone. I was not having a smartwatch back then. I was also not carrying any music equipment to listen while running. My cellphone would act as a Camera as well as Music Player. I would stop my Music to click pics and go back to running with music. Even my running meter was a mobile app. So, I was juggling with a lot of things on my mobile. But, it was fun back then.
When I would come back from the run, I would think of a good quote of mine and post it with one of the best pics of the day. In the process, I found that I was engaging myself with running at a deeper level. At an emotional level. and my friends responded to it very positively. But gradually they started losing interest in the game of running. Nevertheless, I had understood by then that Social connect works wonders for pursuing a thing that matters to you. It gives you the motivation, the drive and the ways to move beyond self-made boundaries.
My school group friends stopped putting likes or reciprocating after some time. But there were one or two, who would come back every day and give a BIG THUMBS UP to me. They became my torchbearers.
One of them who is my hero as well as an Army Col. He in the meantime realizing that I am supposed to be pushed forward for the cause of run, create a group that he named Awesum Threesum. We were three friends in the school group who were left with lasting interest to run. So, we formed our own group and started sharing our physical activities there.
The group became the game changer for me. We 3 started to share much more intensely. Little details. Any crazy idea. There, the col. introduced me to the idea of running with an app to measure my distance. So far, I was doing casual runs. The only parameter that I measured was the time that I would spend on tracks. For the first time, he then invited us 2 to join him on Runtastic – An App by Sports branch, Adidas. There, we could connect with other like-minded runners and share our scores. These days, I am using STRAVA, the place to be for self-lovers and runners.
Now, the group hosts his friends and my friends. And these are those who love to give themselves the magic of the move-ment. We all pursue different sports. One pursues, running, another cycling. But, we all have one single goal – be fit and empower others to be fit.
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